Social Spotlight - Twitter Archivestag:blog.tmcnet.com,2012-11-16:/social-spotlight//1742013-04-30T18:38:54ZWelcome to Social Spotlight! When I'm not covering a variety of technology and communications industries - everything from the cloud and VoIP to customer relationship management and data centers - you will find me on social media. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, foursquare, YouTube, Tumblr... you name it, I'm thereTwitter Tornado: Weather Channel Interns Take on Tornado Weektag:blog.tmcnet.com,2013:/social-spotlight//174.509752013-04-30T18:34:02Z2013-04-30T18:38:54ZRachel Ramseyhttp://blog.tmcnet.com/social-spotlight/
You’ve marked your calendar for Shark Week, but have you heard of the week dedicated to tornados? In honor of Tornado Week, the Weather Channel is putting the public in control of the winds. More tweets = more wind. Its interns are sitting in a Twitter-powered tornado in the Weather Channel office – every mention of #tornadoweek on Twitter raises speed of the fans in the room, or the “winds” of the storm.

If the hashtag reaches one million mentions, the interns will have to endure an EF-5 tornado. Currently, the wind speed is at 121 mph and there have been more than 24.6 tweets.

Kevin Planovsky of Vert, the agency tracking the #TornadoWeek tweets, told Mashable the wind speed is effective wind speed, not actual wind speed; it is a representation of how it feels in the room.

This is a great way to utilize social media to raise awareness and get the public to tune in to your website, or in this case, week-long show series. Tornado Week features different TV specials every night this week, including Storm Riders, Truth Twisters and Space Weather. Keep tweeting to see how (if) these interns handle a full-blown tornado!

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Home is Where the Heart is, but Traveling Makes Us Happiertag:blog.tmcnet.com,2013:/social-spotlight//174.509052013-04-10T19:33:12Z2013-04-10T19:34:08ZRachel Ramseyhttp://blog.tmcnet.com/social-spotlight/
Regardless of if you’re flying internationally, road tripping cross-country or sitting in traffic on a Greyhound bus, traveling is always an adventure. Combine the growing number of Wi-Fi networks and Internet-enabled mobile devices with social media accounts and jet-setting travelers, and you no longer have to wonder what that adventure entails.

Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, YouTube and Vine are all outlets that let travelers share their experiences with all of their connections. I don’t know about you, but when I get time off from my everyday life to explore the world, I’m a very happy person. Researchers from the University of Vermont tend to agree.

Morgan Frank, Lewis Mitchell, Peter Dodds and Christopher Danforth recently analyzed 37 million tweets from 180,000 individuals to see how the sentiments people express over Twitter change as they move further away from their average location. Turns out, we’re further away we are, the happier we become -- or at least on Twitter.

People tweet largely from two locations: work and home. The research found that people in cities tend to travel over a larger area than people who live in less densely populated areas.

Using an established scale of happiness associated with common words, the researchers measured the sentiments of each tweet based on location. Tweets that were written thousands of kilometers from an individuals’ expected location are more likely to contain the words “beach,” “great,” “restaurant and less likely to contain negative words such as “no,” “don’t” and “hate.” Researchers say the biggest difference in expressed happiness levels is the result of the reduced use of these negative words when further from home.

This isn’t the first time Twitter sentiments have been measured and analyzed. A team at the Vermont Complex Systems center recently posted a report, “The Geography of Happiness: Connecting Twitter sentiment and expression, demographics, and objective characteristics of place,” which studied the correlations between real-time expressions of individuals across the U.S. and a wide range of emotional, geographic, demographic and health characteristics.

The report analyzed more than 80 million words generated over the course of several recent years on Twitter, revealing the happiest states (Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Utah and Vermont) and saddest states (Louisiana, Mississippi, Maryland, Michigan and Delaware.) Similar to the University of Vermont study, this report based its analysis on the appearance and frequency of words such as rainbow, love, beauty, hope, wonderful and wine to determine happiness and words like damn, boo, ugly, smoke, hate and lied to determine sadness.

“Of course, an important caveat is that expressed happiness is not the same as actual happiness,” MIT Technology Review explained. “But nevertheless, this kind of analysis clearly gives sociologists an unprecedented new window into the human psyche.”

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Happy 7th Birthday Twitter!tag:blog.tmcnet.com,2013:/social-spotlight//174.508512013-03-21T12:53:17Z2013-03-21T12:59:23ZIn 2006, Suri Cruise was born, Italy won the FIFA World Cup, the one billionth song was downloaded on iTunes and Facebook opened up to everyone ages 13 and older. In 2006, I was still in high school and was...Rachel Ramseyhttp://blog.tmcnet.com/social-spotlight/
In 2006, Suri Cruise was born, Italy won the FIFA World Cup, the one billionth song was downloaded on iTunes and Facebook opened up to everyone ages 13 and older. In 2006, I was still in high school and was four years away from creating my Twitter account and sending my first tweet. Seven years ago today, Jack Dorsey tweeted his very first 140-character message.

Today, Twitter has 200 million active users who send 400 million tweets per day.

“As we’ve grown, Twitter has become a true global town square — a public place to hear the latest news, exchange ideas and connect with people all in real time. This is where you come to connect with the world at large,” Karen Wickre, editorial director at Twitter, wrote in a blog post.

Wickre could not be more right – Twitter has evolved into a platform for real-time response, opinions and information, especially for major events. You can’t watch the Grammys, the Super Bowl, March Madness or any breaking news without seeing an overwhelming number of tweets related to the topic.

In celebration of Twitter’s seventh birthday, here are the top seven moments on the microblogging site.

Dorsey’s first tweet, which was also the world’s first.

The uprising in Iran, which drew millions of Iranians into the streets and elicited an unprecedented number of tweets about a political election.

The response to the Japanese earthquake and tsumani validated the site as a place to go for information as well as to vent feelings of grief.

“Four more years.” by Barack Obama after winning the 2012 presidential election remains the most retweeted tweet to date.

Turning control of @pontifex to Pope Francis ignited 130,000 tweets per minute.

Here’s to many more – can’t wait to see what the next seven years hold for us! Happy tweeting.

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Twitter at the Oscars: 8.9 Million Tweetstag:blog.tmcnet.com,2013:/social-spotlight//174.507622013-02-25T17:13:50Z2013-02-25T17:16:14ZRachel Ramseyhttp://blog.tmcnet.com/social-spotlight/
There really isn’t a major event anymore that doesn’t include real-time tweeting to document and share opinions and memes. The 2013 Super Bowl generated 24.1 million tweets, last weekend’s Grammy Awards saw 14 million tweets and last night’s Oscars rang in 8.9 million tweets – 2.1 million during the red carpet and 6.8 million during the awards show.

Adele’s Skyfall performance was the second top-tweets-per-minute (TPM) moment, with 82,300 TPM. Skyfall winning Best Original Song followed in fourth with 64,000 TPM. Adele originally used social media to get fans excited for Skyfall last year by teasing the song on Twitter with a photo of the sheet music and the Facebook page with the song’s artwork.

The top-tweeted moment of the night was during the Best Picture award for Argo, receiving 85,300 TPM. First Lady Michelle Obama presented the award from the White House.

When Jennifer Lawrence won Best Actress in a Leading Role, she made the top third moment on Twitter with 71,600 TPM. The Hunger Games and Silver Linings Playbook star tripped while making her way to the stage, eliciting her first words on stage to be “You guys are just standing up because you feel bad I fell and that’s really embarrassing but thank you.”

Following in fifth place on Twitter was for Anne Hathaway winning Best Actress in a Supporting Role with 60,400 TPM. Hathaway also was the inspiration for a new Twitter account last night, @HathawayNipple, which has almost 4,000 followers. “Anyone else feeling a little chilly? #Oscars” and “#LesNipplerables” are two of the account’s tweets from last night.

Twitter’s Oscars Index, a service that tracks social media sentiment about the top Oscars moments and people, rated Silver Linings Playbook at the best picture winner. The index tracks positive sentiment or nice comments -- if a nominee has an index of 80, comments about that nominee are more positive than roughly 80 percent of all the other terms on Twitter. The Index gave Silver Linings Playbook a score of 92.5 on a scale of 100. The Index correctly predicted five out of six Oscars winners.

Oscar host Seth MacFarlane got mixed reviews for the night on the micro-blogging site. Awkward and sexist jokes split the global audience for support and distaste.

Really with the slavery joke in the opening!!! And the Chris Brown and Rhianna joke??? Seth Macfarlane!!! N-word joke... #startitoff

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How to Land the Ultimate Sports Social Media Jobtag:blog.tmcnet.com,2013:/social-spotlight//174.507232013-02-14T21:26:26Z2013-02-14T21:28:06ZRachel Ramseyhttp://blog.tmcnet.com/social-spotlight/
XFINITY is looking to fill its social media spot for XFINITY Sports, so it’s appropriately turning to social media to recruit and invite candidates to apply.

The “Ultimate Sports Social Media Job” is offering one person the chance to become the new voice of @XFINITYSports, where they will post updates to more than 14,000 followers, attend major sporting events with behind-the-scenes access and interview athletic personalities for one year.

Interested? You have until Feb. 18 to apply, submitting a video of your sports knowledge and social media skills. After that, there will be wild card contest submissions posted online for voting from March 4-11, and from March 22-24 ten semifinalists will be flown to Philadelphia for performance evaluations at Xfinity Live!, a dining and entertainment district located in the Wells Fargo Complex. Five finalists will be on-site for baseball’s opening weekend April 5-7, where they will get the chance to show off their social media skills by participating in a series of challenges, and the winner will be announced mid-April.

Austin Schindel was the previous winner and has been living and breathing the sports world for the past year. Best moments – attending and covering UFC 148 Silva vs. Sonnen II and the MLB All-Star game.

Since social media has become a lot more mainstream in the past few years, new ways to use these networks are popping up almost every day. We’ve seen social media contests for product giveaways, vacation opportunities and cash prizes, but is utilizing social media as an interactive outlet for job applications the future of employment? Only time will tell!

To apply for this position, visit XFINITY’s Facebook page and click on the “Dream Job” tab on the top. Good luck!

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LL Cool J and The Hashtag Grammys tag:blog.tmcnet.com,2013:/social-spotlight//174.507102013-02-11T22:36:24Z2013-02-11T22:39:34ZRachel Ramseyhttp://blog.tmcnet.com/social-spotlight/
Last night was the 55th annual Grammy Awards, recognizing the top artists, producers, albums and songs in the music industry. Technology made an appearance with Carrie Underwood’s dress-turned-light-show and Frank Ocean’s “Forrest Gump” performance, in which he performed at a keyboard hidden behind a projector displaying running legs in a matching yellow suit.

Ladies Love Cool James, (LL Cool J) hosted the event, and made it clear to everyone he knows what a hashtag on Twitter is.

I get the idea behind this was to promote the Grammy’s social media presence, but unfortunately all they needed to do was display the designated hashtag (#grammys) -- Twitter’s thousands of users know how to utilize a hashtag when they see one. Also, for someone who talked a lot about Twitter last night, LL Cool J only tweeted a whopping eight times, with at least four of them after the show was over.

Strategy aside, the event generated about 13.2 million tweets, 2.6 million of which used #grammys, and more than 15.4 million social media interactions. The top three tweets-per-minute (TPM) moments were when Jay-Z, Kanye West, Frank Ocean and The-Dream won best rap collection with 116,400 TPM, Prince announced Gotye winning record of the year with 109,400 TPM and fun. won best new artist with 100,600 TPM. The Grammys became 2013’s second-biggest social media event, following the Super Bowl, which set an all-time record with 52 million social interactions in one day.

The Grammy’s official Twitter page did a great job at teasing the event and interacting with followers in real-time throughout the show. Contrasting LL Cool J’s eight tweets, @TheGRAMMYs tweeted, retweeted and replied at least 100 times yesterday, congratulating award winners, narrating who was on stage when and giving followers sneak peeks into The Grammys backstage.

Common tips I’ve heard so far for events such as The Grammys include working on location-based alerts and messages (talk about spoiler alerts for the West Coast audience), streaming a feed of tweets/social media posts about the event and getting creative with the number of celebrities you have in one place.

My favorite part of the show was tribute those who have passed and the victims of Sandy Hook Elementary School featuring Elton John, Zac Brown, Mumford & Sons, Mavis Staples, Brittany Howard and T Bone Burnett to The Band’s “The Weight.”

For a more detailed look into social media before and after the awards show, SocialTimes uploaded a great infographic with a lot of information.

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Twitter Updates Search and Discovertag:blog.tmcnet.com,2013:/social-spotlight//174.506992013-02-08T21:08:36Z2013-02-08T21:14:41ZRachel Ramseyhttp://blog.tmcnet.com/social-spotlight/
Just because you create a successful product doesn’t mean the work is over. With every innovation comes improvements, updates and upgrades. Twitter this week updated its mobile app for Android and iOS, as well as mobile.twitter.com, to emphasize on-the-go usage with a single stream of content.

Updates include a new display for the Connect tab, which now defaults with Interactions to show new followers, retweets, favorites and mentions. For those users who prefer to only see mentions, the display settings can be adjusted in the “Connect tab” options in settings. The speed of links is also improved: clicking on a URL in a tweet now takes you directly to the link instead of expanding and previewing it in another Twitter tab. Discover, which includes tweets, activity, trends and suggestions of accounts to follow, is now condensed into a single stream and features new previews for activity and trends.

Old vs. New: Twitter’s Discover tab.

It seems search is a hot topic in social media right now, with Facebook’s recent launch of Graph Search and now Twitter’s update to Search. With this week’s update, search results now include a mix of tweets, photos and accounts in one stream and a more prominent search button – which already was available in Android and iPad apps.

The display isn’t the only thing that changed about Search in Twitter. Users can now find older tweets using Search. Up until this week, Twitter search results displayed results that went back about a week.

“As we roll this out over the coming days, the Tweets that you’ll see in search results represent a fairly small percentage of total Tweets ever sent. We look at a variety of types of engagement, like favorites, retweets and clicks, to determine which Tweets to show. We’ll be steadily increasing this percentage over time, and ultimately, aim to surface the best content for your query. For now, enjoy your trip down memory lane!” Twitter said in a recent blog post.

Today, Twitter announced a new mobile service called Vine that lets you create a share “beautiful, short looping videos.” The key to the service is abbreviation – “Vines” are the shortened form of something longer. Like animated GIFs, Vine lets you share moving scenes and come with sound, and have a six-second maximum length.

Unlike Instagram, this service is completely supported by Twitter, allowing for the cards that let you view the media within the tweet. (Twitter disabled full Instagram integration a little over a month ago.) Vine is also meant to be embedded anywhere besides Twitter.

"Vine is the most exciting thing I've seen in a while," tweeted Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey shortly after the company announced Vine's debut. "Not just because of the team, because it brings an entirely new art form to the world."

Examples of Vine via Twitter and Vine blogs

Twitter acquired Vine in October last year and officially rolled out the service today. It is available for free worldwide on the iPhone and iPod touch in the App Store.

This isn’t the first attempt for a company to try and launch “the video Instagram.” Tout is a service that calls itself a “Twitter for video,” allowing users to shoot videos of up to 15 seconds long and then embed them in tweets, Facebook posts, blogs or elsewhere. Viddy and Cinemagram are other video sharing services that allow users to animate and share small sections of video clips.

"Like Tweets, the brevity of videos on Vine (6 seconds or less) inspires creativity," Michael Sippey, Twitter's vice president of product, wrote. "Now that you can easily capture motion and sound, we look forward to seeing what you create."

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Broken City Knows Its Social Mediatag:blog.tmcnet.com,2013:/social-spotlight//174.505212013-01-10T19:00:29Z2013-01-10T19:14:18ZRachel Ramseyhttp://blog.tmcnet.com/social-spotlight/
Here is a trailer for the upcoming movie, “Broken City” starring Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe and Catherine Zeta-Jones that I’ve seen on TV a lot in the past few weeks. Notice anything?

Reviews to promote movies were once reserved for notable publications, but this entire trailer is built on Twitter and viewers’ reviews. It’s a creative spin on promoting the movie through what “real” people are saying and encouraging the movie’s audience to give feedback on social media. The end of the trailer, the build up to the title of the movie, shows #BROKENCITY and a URL for Facebook.com/BrokenCityMovie.

This movie is just another example of how social media is becoming more prominent in our everyday lives and how it is a very effective marketing tool. Events, movies, products and companies are legitimized with taking advantage of the vast amounts of social media opportunities. The YouTube page for Broken City is completely decked out with a customized username, custom background and a playlist of ten videos, including interviews with Mark Wahlberg, the official trailer and other commercial spots for the film, and links to the film’s official website, Facebook page and Twitter page.

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Yo Quiero Taco Bell....On My Speedotag:blog.tmcnet.com,2013:/social-spotlight//174.505042013-01-07T22:12:37Z2013-01-07T22:17:28ZRachel Ramseyhttp://blog.tmcnet.com/social-spotlight/
Interacting with customers on social media is a win-win situation. In addition to satisfying the customers' needs and giving them some bragging rights for earning a company’s recognition, the company itself also earns credit. People like companies that like their customers. When you respond, retweet, comment or like anything involving your customers, you are positioning yourself to succeed with consumers.

If a customer wants an answer to a question by tweeting at a company, it’s not unreasonable for them to expect a response. If they are having trouble finding a link on a company’s website, it shouldn’t be a problem for them to get in the contact with the company to find it. Even if they want a customized bathing suit, it’s not the most unrealistic request.

A high school swimmer, Ryan Klarner, recently posted on Taco Bell’s Facebook page asking for a Speedo that read, “Think Outside The Buns.” Taco Bell not only responded to the post, but sent him the branded swimwear.

It is actions like this that separates a company from competitors. The company’s current slogan, “Live Mas,” (previously “Think Outside the Bun” and “Yo Quiero Taco Bell”) was launched in February as a more “lifestyle-targeted” slogan. Klarner’s claim to fame as an accredited high school swimmer certainly seems to fit that genre.

Taco Bell has been recognized before as one of the wittiest brands on social media. Go to its Twitter profile – the company is constantly retweeting and responding to other Twitter users. It responds to its followers on Twitter or anyone tweeting about tacos, tweets along with trending topics and even references pop culture. In teasing its next big launch, the Cool Rang Doritos Locos Taco, Taco Bell’s Facebook and Twitter pages both included a photo of a bag of Cool Range Doritos alongside a taco with the caption, “Anything could happen in 2013.”

The fast food chain also used social media platforms to push advertising for new appetizer items, including Facebook ads, promoted tweets, BuzzFeed, Pandora, Machinima, Waze, YouTube, Yelp and PayPal.

Other reasons for Taco Bell’s reign as one of the top brands embracing social media are its understanding of the power of visuals, picking up on popular social media trends, lack of fear to be funny, touching all of the bases (social media platforms), integration of different types of media, addressing of industry issues and its boldness. It has set the bar high for other companies looking to engage their consumers and create a genuine online, social media presence. I’m excited to see what the brand will bring in 2013!

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Happy New Year!tag:blog.tmcnet.com,2012:/social-spotlight//174.504792012-12-31T21:19:02Z2012-12-31T21:23:17ZRachel Ramseyhttp://blog.tmcnet.com/social-spotlight/
On the last day of 2012, I’d like to wish you a very happy and safe New Year! Here’s what’s happening on the social media blogs this New Year’s Eve.

Already trending on Twitter are NYE, Happy New Year, #Best 2012Memories and #MyWishIn2013. As similar topics start to emerge as the celebrations continue, be on the lookout for a huge amount of resolution tweets tomorrow.

“Whether you aspire to something silly or serious next year, Tweeting your #resolutions can be an effective way to account for your actions.”

Still haven’t made any resolutions for the next 365 days? The blog post links to some helpful resources for ideas.

Prepare for glitter. Lots of it. Although you can opt to search for NYE photos on Instagram, the photo sharing service wanted to give you a simple way to see how people are celebrating at instagram.com/nye along with locations in the world (organized by time zones) actually already ringing in the New Year. Instagram also hosts a Weekend Hashtag Project every weekend, with the most recent one appropriately themed #WHPResolutions.

Looking forward to seeing what 2013 holds for both Instagram and Twitter. Happy New Year!

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Year in Review -- 2012 on Social Mediatag:blog.tmcnet.com,2012:/social-spotlight//174.504712012-12-27T17:06:29Z2012-12-27T17:45:43Z As we inch closer to the New Year, social networks are rounding up 2012 with the top highlights, trends and events of the past 12 months. Most of these reports came out before the Sandy Hook Elementary School in...Rachel Ramseyhttp://blog.tmcnet.com/social-spotlight/

As we inch closer to the New Year, social networks are rounding up 2012 with the top highlights, trends and events of the past 12 months. Most of these reports came out before the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT shooting and Christmas -- two 2012 events that dominated social media and I think belong on all of these lists.

By now, we’ve gathered that if something big is going on, you can always count on Facebook to find out a) what is happening and b) what all of your friends think about it. As a population, it’s just what we do – share.

With Facebook’s 2012 year in review, users can revisit the 20 biggest moments on their Facebook Timeline including life events, highlighted posts and popular stories. Here are some of the top trends on Facebook this year by categories.

2012 was the year of memes.

TBH (to be honest)

YOLO (you only live once)

KONY

One-word comment

Gangnam Style

Cinnamon challenge

Cray

SMH (shaking my head)

Big Bird

Linsanity

Events

U.S. Presidential Election

Superbowl XLVI

Death of Whitney Houston

Superstorm Sandy

London 2012 Olympics

Death of Trayvon Martin

Facebook IPO

Aurora shootings

Death of Dick Clark

Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage.

Television

Duck Dynasty

Honey Boo Boo

Big Bang Theory

Game of Thrones

Downtown Abbey

Breaking Amish

Ink Master

Long Island Medium

Wife Swap

Two Broke Girls

Top 2012 Google searches included Whitney Houston, Gangnam Style and Hurricane Sandy. Image searches were for One Direction, Selena Gomez and iPhone 5, athlete searches were for Jeremy Lin, Michael Phelps and Peyton Manning, events were for Hurricane Sandy, Kate Middleton Pictures Released and Olympics 2012 and top feature film searches were for The Hunger Games, Skyfall and Prometheus.

Twitter has quickly become a blend between being a real-time news source, an instant source of memes and a personal diary for users’ opinions on everything happening in the world. Included in the year wrap-up includes Golden Tweets, Pulse of the planet, Only on Twitter, Trends, New Voices and Your year on Twitter. Partnering with Vizify, a personal website that provides interactive infographics powered by your data, your year on Twitter includes a golden tweet from 2012, a golden follower, key words I tweeted and how many responses, and how many tweets since January 2012. Users have the option to share the golden tweets and most talked-about topics, as well as issue a “Thank you” to your golden follower.

The top tweet of 2012 is by Barack Obama after the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election, which he tweeted, “Four more years,” accompanied by a photo of the first couple hugging. Other golden tweets included tweets by Justin Bieber, TJ Lang, Team GB and actor Kouichi Yamadera.

When it comes to taking a look at past events, there’s no better medium than the social media photo sharing site that gives us a visually appealing look at these events. From Lo-Fi and X-Pro II to Amaro and Nashville, if there’s a photo, there’s a filter for it. Instagram helps judge what were considered some of the biggest events based on how many users tag a photo with a hashtag or location.

Besides the top events Instagram listed, users can also browse more photos of events from around the world in 2012 by browsing blog posts with the “Current Events” tag.

Each year brings more infamous statuses, tweets, photos and searches. However, 2012 wouldn’t be complete without sharing videos. YouTube’s 2012 rewind featured the most popular clips, including Call Me Maybe covers, Gangnam Style and Flex Baumgartner’s supersonic freefall. In 2012, users watched four billion hours of video a month.

“Millions of creators are using YouTube channels to experiment with innovative forms of entertainment, explore their passions and interests, and take creativity and pop culture to new levels. 2012’s top trending videos showcase this creative ingenuity in ways we'd never before thought possible,” said YouTube in a blog post.

Here's an infographic of the 2012 in a summary. (Click for larger image)

That wraps up some of the 2012 reviews for the major social media sites used by billions of users around the world. Stay tuned for what 2013 has to bring and what we will do to document it! Happy New Year.

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Pope's First Tweettag:blog.tmcnet.com,2012:/social-spotlight//174.504262012-12-12T16:27:41Z2012-12-12T16:36:37ZRachel Ramseyhttp://blog.tmcnet.com/social-spotlight/
Last week, the Twitterverse welcomed Pope Benedict XVI. His handle, @Pontifex, has been untouched until today.

“Dear friends, I am please to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart.”

The tweet has received more than 41,000 tweets and 13,500 favorites. The pope actually sent his very first tweet over a year ago, using a generic Vatican account to launch the Holy See’s news information portal. Someone in his name tweeted daily during Lent, part of the Vatican’s efforts to increase the church presence in social media.

The idea of his personal account has been gaining traction since February. Vatican officials have acknowledged the pope won't actually type the messages and that someone in the Vatican's secretariat of state will write them on his behalf. But they have insisted that the words will be his alone, culled from his speeches, homilies or catechism lessons.

The @Pontifex English account remains the most popular, nearing 800,000 followers. The pope is tweeting simultaneously in Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, German, Polish and Arabic, and all eight languages combined surpassed the one million mark right around the time of his first tweet.

As there always is with news, there are two opinions on the Pope getting a Twitter. One welcomes the account and the Vatican’s embracement of social media. The other side thinks it is unnecessary for him to have a Twitter account because of the criticism and hate-filled tweets that some people are bound to (and already have started to) send to the account. "The pope has an iPad?" comedian Jon Stewart asked earlier this year. The Onion satirical newspaper ran a piece "Pope tweets picture of self with God." And in perhaps a more long-term and problematic issue for the Vatican, the @Pontifex handle was flooded with negative messages from users remarking on the clerical sex abuse scandal.

Vatican officials have stressed that he is merely walking in the footsteps of his predecessors in using the latest in communications technology to spread the faith.

Pope Pius XI caused a similar stir when he launched Vatican Radio some 80 years ago to bring the pope's message on radio waves around the globe. The Vatican also has its own newspaper, television service and maintains dedicated YouTube channels and an Internet news portal.

Even though there is some controversy, the gist I get about the Pope joining Twitter is a positive one. Just like celebrities, people and Twitter users are thrilled at the opportunity to connect to the pope. It’s just another stepping stone emphasizing the important presence of Twitter – it clearly makes a big enough impact to draw in global figures such the pope.

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Twitter Filters and Instagram Updatetag:blog.tmcnet.com,2012:/social-spotlight//174.504192012-12-11T14:22:45Z2012-12-11T14:37:23ZRachel Ramseyhttp://blog.tmcnet.com/social-spotlight/
Since the massive adoption and popularity of Instagram, we’ve seen a few other sites pick up filters of their own. Facebook, which acquired Instagram in April, recently updated its photo uploading feature. Users can now upload multiple photos at a time (up to 30) and edit with Facebook's own set of filters.

Facebook filters

Last week, Instagram pulled support for Twitter Cards, which enables users to view an Instagram photo straight from the Twitter feed. Since Instagram launched Web profiles and is increasing its Web presence, Instagram integration with Twitter now only shows a link instead of the photo.

The ability to share photos on Twitter has been possible since June 2011. Unlike Instagram photos on Twitter now (just a link), the Twitter filters are allowed to be viewed right from the tweet. The new feature allows users to edit photos and apply photo filters from within Twitter-built applications. Aviary, a provider of photo-editing applications, powers Twitter’s new filters and effects feature. There are eight filter options similar to Instagram’s 19, ranging from black and white to vintage. Other effects include cropping, zooming and auto-enhancing.

Twitter isn’t alone in the application updates. Instagram also announced updates yesterday, with improved camera features and a new filter, Willow. Yesterday’s update (Instagram 3.2) is the largest upgrade to the Instagram iOS camera since Instagram was revamped a year ago.

Improved changes include improve tilt-shift focus, larger images on news feeds, Instagram-themed shutter and shutter release button, a preview of the most recent photo on your camera roll, improved camera roll image selector, optional grid guide for live photos and a permanent grid guide for the scale and crop screen and speed and reliability improvements.

Instagram update

Filtered photos are now saved to a separate album called “Instagram” in the iOS camera roll and there is a Foursquare button on location pages that opens the Foursquare application, or mobile website, with details about the venue.

Willow is a monochrome filter with subtle purple tones and a translucent glowing white border, working well on portraits, still life and architecture photographs with contrast. The latest addition to the filter family is available on both iOS and Android devices.

The competition is still going strong between the two giant social networks. Maybe Instagram's Foursquare integration will continue to get stronger, improving the location-focused app and continuing the feud between Twitter and Instagram. For users, now you have three huge options for adding filters to your photos to three different platforms -- choices are starting to get a little overwhelming.

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Instagram and Twitter - 'Social Media Frenemies'tag:blog.tmcnet.com,2012:/social-spotlight//174.504032012-12-06T19:35:09Z2012-12-11T14:40:16ZRachel Ramseyhttp://blog.tmcnet.com/social-spotlight/
Over the past 24 hours there has been a lot of talk about how Instagram pulled support for Twitter Cards, resulting in cropped or poorly displayed images if you opt to click “View photo” instead of the actual Instagram link.

Users can still share Instagram photos to Twitter, but the image on the two platforms will look different. The idea is to increase traffic to Instagram and utilize the platform and its Web presence more directly, especially now that it has released its Web profiles.

“A handful of months ago, we supported Twitter cards because we had a minimal Web presence. We’ve since launched several improvements to our website that allow users to directly engage with Instagram content through likes, comments, hashtags, and now we believe the best experience is for us to link back to where the content lives,” said Kevin Systrom, Instagram CEO and co-founder, in a statement.

I know this is big news for the companies – I’m sure Twitter wants to be able to offer a completely integrated and seamless experience to users just as much as Instagram wants to drive traffic to its platform -- but as users, is it such a big deal?

First of all, I noticed differences in some Twitter-posted Instagram photos yesterday, but I’m searching now and can’t even tell the difference. Depending on the image, you can still get the general gist of the photo, even with the crop. The problem Instagram might face is the fact that users just may not care that much to click on links. Personally, this probably won’t affect my laptop/PC experience, as I click on links pretty often, but mobile-wise, I’m much less likely to click on a link just because it slows my flow. Unless I really, really want to see that image, I’ll likely just move on and go back to catching up on my feed.

Apparently, the plan is for Instagram users to be able to share photos to Twitter via links only. There is no need to worry about a future complete disintegration between the two platforms, though.

Systrom said, “We think it’s a better user experience, currently. I think this is an evolution of who we are and where we want links to our content to go. We will always be integrated with Twitter with regards to tweeting a link to your Instagram photo.”